Posted by burnsy483 on 12/5/2012 12:47:00 PM (view original):"That's not an impossible scenario. All that context you added tells us something. But the W/L record isn't adding anything. PItcher B, who pitched a full season with a 3.25 ERA is better than pitcher A, who pitched 1/3 of the season with a 3.00 ERA."

So if all you had was the win-loss record and the ERA, you're picking the pitcher with the better win-loss record and the worse ERA. So win-loss record is NOT COMPLETELY WORTHLESS!!!!!!!!!!

Thread closed.

Uh, you left off the part about one the pitcher only throwing 1/3 of the season. That's the MOST IMPORTANT PART of your example.

Posted by burnsy483 on 12/5/2012 12:47:00 PM (view original):"That's not an impossible scenario. All that context you added tells us something. But the W/L record isn't adding anything. PItcher B, who pitched a full season with a 3.25 ERA is better than pitcher A, who pitched 1/3 of the season with a 3.00 ERA."

So if all you had was the win-loss record and the ERA, you're picking the pitcher with the better win-loss record and the worse ERA. So win-loss record is NOT COMPLETELY WORTHLESS!!!!!!!!!!

Thread closed.

Uh, you left off the part about one the pitcher only throwing 1/3 of the season. That's the MOST IMPORTANT PART of your example.

It was 2/3 the season. Again, reading comprehension.

So, just to be clear, games started is more important then win-loss record?

It's not a straw man. Pro-W/L posters are arguing that W/L tells gives us something worth paying attention to. WHAT THE **** DOES IT TELL US?

If you tell me a starting pitcher had a 3.40 ERA, I can safely assume he had a solid year. If I tell you that a starting pitcher went 14-9, you have no ******* idea what kind of year he had.

It is absolutely a straw man. And you've gone and repeated it again. I would guess because you're not at all interested at seeing things from someone else's point of view, despite many people attempting in good faith to explain it to you.

Not one person is claiming that W/L BY ITSELF tells you a whole lot (though, as you already admitted, extreme W/L give you some sort of idea about what sort of season a player had, which is a step back from your original point of COMPLETELY WORTHLESS.)

But yet again, for perhaps the 20th time in the thread, you've asked about a context-free 14-9 record. NOBODY IS CLAIMING THAT IT TELLS YOU SOMETHING BY ITSELF.

Maybe I should say that again so you stop, pleaseohpleasestop. NOBODY IS CLAIMING THAT IT TELLS YOU SOMETHING BY ITSELF.

Now, if I have two players who were both somewhat average, with similar ERAs, say 3.80 and 3.73. I hope you'll agree that over the course of a season those two ERA's are more or less the same in terms of pitcher effectiveness, for all the reasons posted in this thread about how ERA is GOOD, but not PERFECT.
Let's also say they pitched a similar number of innings, pitched in similar parks, etc.
Now, one of them is 14-6, and the other is 8-13.

W/L doesn't GUARANTEE that the 14-6 pitcher was better than the 8-13 - the difference could have conceivably been luck (in particular, of course, run support). But over the course of time, the majority of the time, the 14-6 pitcher was better than the 8-13 pitcher. For a variety of reasons.

If we completely eliminate W/L from our view, we would be forced to conclude that the two pitchers were even. But W/L gives us some context to guess that maybe there's something we're not seeing that might have contributed to such a difference in record.

But those pitchers ARE about even.

They allowed roughly the same amount of runs in roughly the same run scoring environment. The difference in W/L is probably 100% attributable to their team's offense.

Thank you. I understand your point of view after all the yelling and you deliberately misunderstanding the points being made. And you saying that anyone who doesn't share your opinion is a cro-magnon era imbecile.

From where I stand, knowing that I am not am imbecile, and knowing that I understand modern statistics just as much as you do (though you like to pretend that everyone against you is stuck in 1920), my opinion is that you are wrong, and that those pitchers most likely are not even.

Note that I say most likely - W/L is certainly not as concrete as ERA (despite ERA's imperfections). But my opinion is that it should be taken into consideration. And though you claim that nobody believes that any more, I think you'll find that almost everybody in baseball, including most stat nerds, agree with me.

I looked for a clear example from last year, to try to help you understand what I take from W/L. For an individual player/season, it's subtle, but it's definitely there. I found a nice pair:

Cole Hamels: 17-6, 3.05 ERA, 215 IP, 1.12 WHIP

Jordan Zimmerman: 12-8, 2.94 ERA, 195 IP, 1.17 WHIP

These are the most available, easy to find & read stats.

Now at this point, I say... these pitchers are really close in terms of effectiveness. I'd take the extra 20 IP from Cole, despite his ERA being a tenth of a run higher.
But now I'll look a little deeper into the stats. Adjusted for park, Zimmerman still has a lead, 134 ERA+ to 131. Also, Hamels gives up less hits & walks but more HR's, accounting for the difference in ERA. But why is their record so different? Probably run support, let me check it. (remembering at this point that it's a little harder to find - there's also a worthwhile shorthand in W/L that hasn't even been mentioned in the thread).

Cole Hamels 4.86 runs/game, Jordan Zimmerman 4.75 runs/game.

Hmm, the difference in run support is almost exactly the converse of the difference in their ERA's. So statistically they should have had pretty much the same record, but they didn't.

Now, you could conclude that it was just dumb luck. Or you could think about what we already know about baseball, that some pitchers know how to bear down when needed and when to pace themselves. Cole Hamels is a veteran in his prime with over 1000 IPs. Zimmerman coming into the season had less than 300. I contend that Cole Hamels was the superior pitcher in 2012, by a significant, if not massive, margin.

And I also contend that I could have at least guessed that from their W/L without doing all the work (although I would have been less certain than I am now).

Posted by mfahie on 12/5/2012 1:43:00 PM (view original):I looked for a clear example from last year, to try to help you understand what I take from W/L. For an individual player/season, it's subtle, but it's definitely there. I found a nice pair:

Cole Hamels: 17-6, 3.05 ERA, 215 IP, 1.12 WHIP

Jordan Zimmerman: 12-8, 2.94 ERA, 195 IP, 1.17 WHIP

These are the most available, easy to find & read stats.

Now at this point, I say... these pitchers are really close in terms of effectiveness. I'd take the extra 20 IP from Cole, despite his ERA being a tenth of a run higher.
But now I'll look a little deeper into the stats. Adjusted for park, Zimmerman still has a lead, 134 ERA+ to 131. Also, Hamels gives up less hits & walks but more HR's, accounting for the difference in ERA. But why is their record so different? Probably run support, let me check it. (remembering at this point that it's a little harder to find - there's also a worthwhile shorthand in W/L that hasn't even been mentioned in the thread).

Cole Hamels 4.86 runs/game, Jordan Zimmerman 4.75 runs/game.

Hmm, the difference in run support is almost exactly the converse of the difference in their ERA's. So statistically they should have had pretty much the same record, but they didn't.

Now, you could conclude that it was just dumb luck. Or you could think about what we already know about baseball, that some pitchers know how to bear down when needed and when to pace themselves. Cole Hamels is a veteran in his prime with over 1000 IPs. Zimmerman coming into the season had less than 300. I contend that Cole Hamels was the superior pitcher in 2012, by a significant, if not massive, margin.

And I also contend that I could have at least guessed that from their W/L without doing all the work (although I would have been less certain than I am now).